Download or read book Wit and the Writing of History written by Paul Plass and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wit has many uses in political discourse--to entertain, to underscore or unmask, to hinder or enhance insight. Wit and the Writing of History focuses on how this potential is realized in the historiography of the earlier Principate. Preeminently in Tacitus, to a lesser degree in Suetonius and Dio Cassius, wit is a vehicle for political understanding and judgment of the historical account. As part of Roman political life, hostile anecdotal or epigrammatic wit was deeply embedded in the sources used by historians and is reflected in the rhetoric of their narratives. Some anecdotes may, in fact, have been mere jests later taken as fact, hence the frequent problem of credulity. But what is historically false can be politically true. Not only were political jokes a weapon for making some fair points against the Principate; ancient rhetorical theory recognized that wit in general arises from a violation of normal, expected ways of thinking. What is "funny" is thus disturbing in a serious way as well as amusing, and in the hands of Tacitus wit becomes scalpel as well as sword.
Download or read book Humorous History written by A. G. Mogan and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a little book to read instead of the newspaper over your morning coffee. It is meant to--hopefully--put a smile on your face.History should not always be so serious. For it is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our objective, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished, and died. And if we cannot laugh at ourselves, then we are condemned to repeat the very same deeds of the past.*** The paperback contains black & white illustrations
Download or read book The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain written by Mark Twain and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Familiarity breeds contempt — and children." "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear." "Heaven for climate. Hell for company." This attractive paperback gift edition of the renowned American humorist's epigrams and witticisms features hundreds of quips on life, love, history, culture, travel, and other topics from his fiction, essays, letters, and autobiography.
Download or read book Voltaire s Alphabet of Wit written by Voltaire and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wit written by Margaret Edson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award Margaret Edson's powerfully imagined Pulitzer Prize–winning play examines what makes life worth living through her exploration of one of existence's unifying experiences—mortality—while she also probes the vital importance of human relationships. What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, "The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It's about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It's about compassion, but it shows insensitivity." In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end? The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson's writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
Download or read book Women s Wit and Wisdom A Book Of Quotations written by Susan L. Rattiner and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 400 memorable quotes from the last 2,500 years by Sappho, Queen Elizabeth I, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, Erma Bombeck, Oprah Winfrey, and many others. A delight!
Download or read book Great Presidential Wit written by Robert J. Dole and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The former senator and presidential candidate collects bipartisan presidential humor from famous, and not-so-famous, chief executives, from Washington to Clinton.
Download or read book Ruse and Wit written by Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays examine a millennium of humorous and satirical writing in the Islamic world. Humor in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish narrative emerges here as a culturally modulated phenomenon that demands examination with reference to its historical framework and that, in turn, communicates as much about its producers as it does about its audience.
Download or read book A Woman of Noble Wit written by Rosemary Griggs and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2021-09-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few women of her time lived to see their name in print. But Katherine was no ordinary woman. She was Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother. This is her story.
Download or read book Wit s End What Wit Is How It Works and Why We Need It written by James Geary and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A witty book about wit that steers an elegant path between waggishness and wisdom." —Stephen Fry Much more than a knack for snappy comebacks, wit is the quick, instinctive intelligence that allows us to think, say, or do the right thing at the right time in the right place. In this whimsical book, James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Geary reasons that wit is both visual and verbal, physical and intellectual: there’s the serendipitous wit of scientists, the crafty wit of inventors, the optical wit of artists, and the metaphysical wit of philosophers. In Wit’s End, Geary embraces wit in every form by adopting a different style for each chapter; he writes the section on verbal repartee as a dramatic dialogue, the neuroscience of wit as a scientific paper, the spirituality of wit as a sermon, and other chapters in jive, rap, and the heroic couplets of Alexander Pope. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktales, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, drawing upon traditions of wit from around the world. Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End demonstrates that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.
Download or read book History of West Virginia Old and New written by James Morton Callahan and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book At Wit s End written by Erma Bombeck and published by Fawcett. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "America's irrepressible doyenne of domestic satire." THE BOSTON GLOBE Madcap, bittersweet humor in classic Erma Bombeck-style. You'll laugh until it hurts and love it! "Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet, he's treading water. What do you mean you're a participle in the school play and you need a costume? Those rotten kids. If only they'd let me wake up in my own way. Why do they have to line up along my bed and stare at me like Moby Dick just washed up onto a beach somewhere?"
Download or read book Beyond the Soundtrack written by Daniel Ira Goldmark and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-06-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking collection by the most distinguished musicologists and film scholars in their fields gives long overdue recognition to music as equal to the image in shaping the experience of film. Refuting the familiar idea that music serves as an unnoticed prop for narrative, these essays demonstrate that music is a fully imagined and active power in the worlds of film. Even where films do give it a supporting role—and many do much more—music makes an independent contribution. Drawing on recent advances in musicology and cinema studies, Beyond the Soundtrack interprets the cinematic representation of music with unprecedented richness. The authors cover a broad range of narrative films, from the "silent" era (not so silent) to the present. Once we think beyond the soundtrack, this volume shows, there is no unheard music in cinema.
Download or read book The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson written by Harry Mount and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A return to the wit and wisdom of Boris Johnson – Brexiteer, Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister. New and updated edition. 2019 – the year that Boris took on the 'lingering gloomadon-poppers', pledged to steer the UK between the 'Scylla and Charybdis of Corbyn and Farage' and into the calmer waters of political freedom. Of course there was always bound to be 'a bit of plaster coming off the ceilings of Europe's Chanceries'. Harry Mount has updated his edited collection of the Prime Minister's wit and wisdom with three new chapters dealing with Boris's time as Brexiteer-in-chief; Foreign Secretary and 'On the Threshold of Downing Street'. He describes Boris's Brexit campaign, his leadership breakdown in 2016, his ups and downs as Foreign Secretary, his time outside the political establishment, his turbulent private life and how Boris felt it was his manifest destiny to become the Prime Minister. So buckle up for a riotous tour of the million-pound NHS funder, golden wonder, pro-having, pro-eating blond behemoth. This is the Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson.
Download or read book A Manual of English Literature Historical and Critical written by Thomas Arnold and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased from the Earliest Accounts to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century written by Samuel Austin Allibone and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 1030 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Wit and Wisdom of Downton Abbey written by Jessica Fellowes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best one-liners and caustic quips from all six seasons of Downtown Abbey, with full-color photographs throughout
